Friday, January 15, 2016

After work this week, I was heading east on the
Hana Highway in that dreadful line of vehicles that forms outside of Paia. To
my right were the charred remains and broken glass from a car that had been
abandoned, later set on fire and eventually towed away. Beyond that, I took a
good, long look at the field off the road shoulder. So long, sugar.

Cane fields start at the western lip of Maliko
Gulch and don't stop until you hit Kihei. Cane surrounds our airport and stops
right at the new industrial park around Dairy Road. It hugs the West Maui
Mountains next to Waikapu as if it were a green, grassy flood.

This huge swath of land is all that's left of the
historic crop that changed these islands. Alexander & Baldwin announced
last week that this was the last harvest for Maui, which means the last
commercial harvest for sugar in all of Hawaii. In 2017, sugar will be gone like
that old, burnt-out car on the side of the road.

The end of the sugar era is in sight. Some celebrate.
Opponents of cane burning are happy to see the blazing fires, columns of smoke
and periodic rain of ash falling into yards, swimming pools and cars come to an
end.

Others are somber. There are around 660 cane
workers looking for jobs. On top of that, locals have taken the sugar era's end
particularly hard. It's hard for many to imagine Hawaii without sugar.

Public school kids have to learn about the sugar
industry in history class. We learn about its beginnings on Kauai in the 1830s
and how it grew into a major economic engine in the kingdom. Its influence was
so great that many of the businessmen behind the overthrow of the Hawaiian
Kingdom were heavily invested in the sugar industry.

Sugar demanded amazing feats of engineering to
get the water from East Maui and the north shore through gulches and mountains
and onto the arid isthmus to water the crops.

There was some social engineering too. Companies
recruited workers from Asia, the Americas and Europe. The color of your skin
and your national origin determined how much the company was willing to pay
you.

You lived in camps and usually ran up a big debt
with the company store, making it hard to save enough to start on your own. You
were forced to somehow get along with your neighbors, who also came from some
other part of the world. It became the foundation of local culture.

When I was a history student, we learned that for
decades our economy, politics and society were dominated by sugar barons and
corporations. These companies fought tough battles against their workers and
the right to organize and lost. The plantations were organized and the
companies started collective bargaining with workers. By the time Hawaii
entered the union in 1959, the companies made their peace with labor.

Perhaps it is time for sugar to leave the
islands. Sugar has been slowly declining for most of the second half of the
20th century. Maybe it was only a matter of time. So what will take its place?

Nobody really knows, but some envision a
dystopian future full of swirling dust bowls and a plunging economy. A&B
wants diversified agriculture, but that has left many scratching their heads.
What does that look like? What kind of crops will that be? Is this shibai, just
talk?

The cane fire opponents now have a new fear: The
green fields will be replaced by tract homes and development.

Going back to my commute home, when I finally got
through Paia's plantation-era buildings that now house high-end boutique stores
and organic foods and crossed over Maliko Gulch, I was in Haiku. There used to
be pineapple fields on the other side of Maliko, but they've been gone for
years now and nothing has replaced them. The only thing in the fallow fields
are long, tall patches of grass, wild trees and a Realtor's sign advertising
residential housing lots for sale. Is that what's in store?

One thing is certain: Sugar may be a thing of the
past, but the companies are still around.

The late musician Joe Strummer said that the
future is unwritten. Well put, but it doesn't feel like regular folks will be
doing the writing. The days of social, economic and political dominance by big
landowners and companies aren't numbered like the cane fields. Just what will
happen to the land doesn't seem to be up to us. We will have to wait and see
what A&B wants to do.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Mark Oyama graduated from
Iolani, that prestigious and posh private school in Honolulu, then earned his
bachelor’s degree at the highly-competitive and world-renown California
Institute of Technology. He studied mathematics there. He came back to Hawaii
and earned a master’s degree in physics. When he finished that he enrolled at
the University of Hawaii’s teacher certification program.

This program is the only
one available in the islands. It is designed to train Hawaii’s teachers. In one
of his classes on educational psychology, Oyama was assigned to write an essay
after watching a video called “Growing Up Online.”

In an essay, he wrote that
“Personally, I think that online child predation should be legal, and (he) find(s)
it ridiculous that one could be arrested for comments they make online.” He
went on to write that there should be no age of consent.

That statement caused a
stir in the program and he was called to talk to one of his educational
professors. He told the professor that in his own personal view, there was
nothing wrong with a consensual sexual relationship between a minor student and
an adult teacher. He added, of course, that he understood that that is not the
law and he would obey it and report such conduct if he saw it. He—like ancient
Greeks apparently—just thought that there was nothing wrong with that kind of
relationship. His professors were of a very different opinion.

School officials also had problems
with Oyama’s viewpoints on students with disabilities. In another course, Oyama
wrote that in his view, that some students with disabilities should not be
included in the classroom and that students with learning disabilities may be
“fakers.” He wrote that some disabilities weren’t disabilities at all and were
“rather the crude opinions of psychologists and psychiatrists.”

His professors in the
teaching certificate program were far from impressed. When Oyama applied for
further education toward the teaching certificate, he was denied. Although the
University told him the denial was based on multiple factors, it centered on
his views toward students with disabilities and his views on sexual relations
with minors. These views were “not in alignment” with teaching standards.

Ultimately, Oyama sued the
University on the grounds that the denial of the certificate violated his freedom
of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment in the United States Constitution.
The lower court disagreed and ruled in favor of the University. Oyama appealed
to the federal court of appeals in the Ninth Circuit.

This week the federal
appeals court issued its opinion this week and essentially held that the
denying Oyama’s application based in large part on a classroom discussion and
essays he wrote did not violate his First Amendment rights. The appellate court
was of the view that Oyama’s opinions showed that he did not “absorb” the
necessary teaching standards and indicated that he was not likely to comply
with those standards.

This isn’t the first time something
like this has happened in Hawaii. The case reminds me of a very old proceeding
that occurred in Honolulu during the tumultuous territorial days.

John Reinecke was a
linguist and scholar at the University of Hawaii—the same institution that
threw out Oyama. And just like Oyama he held opinions and viewpoints that were
controversial and unpopular in his day.

Reinecke was very
outspoken about the labor movement. He believed strongly in the power of unions
and the worker’s right to organize. He associated himself with activists and
progressives of his time. Although these views today are far from
earth-shattering and are even guaranteed in our State Constitution, Reinecke
held these views in the late 1940s—when politicians and businessmen,
particularly executives for large sugar companies, were afraid of Communist
bogeymen.

The territorial Department
of Instruction took action against him and his wife for holding these views. Reinecke’s
position on collective bargaining, civil liberties, and social democracy could
be a cover for Communist tendencies at the height of the Red Scare. A very
public hearing was held and the department concluded that even though his
opinions had nothing to do with his academic discipline and teaching, it was
too treacherous and could lead to the indoctrination of young minds. He lost
his teaching job and dismissed in 1948.

Decades later long after
the hysteria against a perceived threat from socialism had passed, he was
reinstated and his name was cleared. The Department of Education made a public
apology.

Ironically (and
schizophrenically), we are now living in a time where an institution of higher
learning recognizes and condemns what it did to the Reineckes, but vigorously
defends its actions against Oyama in federal court. As the saying goes, history
doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.